Doomsday

I just love the end of the world. Whether it's Day Of The Triffids, War Of The Worlds, The Stand, 28 Days Later or any number of other books or movies, there's some vicious little child in me that takes great joy in seeing the whole of civilization smashed into little bitty pieces. So when I heard that Neil Marshall, the director of the great Dog Soldiers, was making an end-of-the-world movie, my sadistic little heart leapt for joy. This was going to be good. This was going to be one of the movies of the year. And I gave it the benefit of the doubt, at least at first. The clunky voice-over I could live with, the excessive gore wasn't a problem (exploding bunny, yay!), and... OK, why are those soldiers standing in the middle of a horde of rabid, disease-carrying Scottish people? Especially when there's a big, safe wall not a hundred feet away? And how did they build that wall so quickly, and how did they prevent anyone from getting out of Scotland, especially before anyone knew how serious the virus was? All right, asking too many questions. There's bound to be one or two plot holes, you just have to look the other way and pretend they aren't there. There's a good action sequence, and then - who's this stumbling old man? He clearly can't act for toffee, but he looks strangely familiar... Bob Hoskins? When did he become such a lousy actor? OK, we can ignore that - my God, the guy playing Canaris is even worse. And how come, with Britain's economy in the dumper, the population of London has doubled thirty years into the future? Wouldn't people be, you know, leaving, rather than moving INTO horrible slums in a dying city? Where did the infected people in that London basement come from? Did they drop from the sky? How come they got there without infecting half the country on their way? And if the evil mastermind is going to wipe out London anyway, why did he bother sending a team up to find a cure for the virus? What was the point of that? And how did those tanks run into the middle of a vast herd of cows without noticing? One cow you might miss, but there are about a thousand of the buggers milling around, and despite the tank's big glass windows, they don't see any cows until someone steps out of the vehicle. I've heard of selective vision, but that's just dribbling madness. And oh yeah, you didn't think tanks generally had large, plate glass windows, did you? And if they did, they'd be made of some amazingly tough material, right? Nope. The windows of this tank can be busted by THROWING A ROCK AT THEM - making the invincible machine vulnerable to anyone with a throwing arm and a pebble. OK, that's enough. 24 minutes into the movie and I just can't write any more. The dialogue is clichéd, the acting is abominable, the plot doesn't make the slightest bit of sense, everything about this film is poorly done trash that seems to have been knocked off in a couple of days by a bunch of witless clowns with less talent than a dung beetle. And yeah, I have seen the rest of the movie - I could be here all day talking about the bits that make no sense, but I'll spare you. All right. Getting worked up now. I'll just take my medication and go off to bed. And when I wake the next morning, maybe I'll have forgotten this wretched, pathetic, miserable dog's dinner of a film.

OK this movie was awful. the camera shots are way to quick - its like you're having a seizure the entire time. the script sucks. being as 'strong' as the leader is, he's horrible at chasing after the 'enemy.' the movie was confusing because it tries to tie in 8000 different scenarios..i mean, how do you go from getting chased by a horseman to driving a Bentley? honestly, i would say the first 7 minutes of the movie are the best. if any type of gore or cannibalism affects you, don't watch it. and if you still really want to watch it, rent it. on the flip side, Rhona Mithra looks amazing in the movie.

I was very impressed by both of Marshall's previous films. Dog Soldiers was a very good addition to the often poorly served werewolf sub-genre and The Descent had some really good and realistic ideas for a horror film... until the cave monsters showed up and it went a bit further than necessary. Still, both were reasonably intelligent modern horror films that showed him to be a talent to watch. I saw this as a free screening due largely Marshall's other films. After seeing it, however, I really wish I had passed. It's little more than a mish-mash of much better films with little in the way of plot or character to fill in the moments between set-pieces and gratuitous moments: e.g. random topless girl, something blows up for no reason, something explodes in a cloud of blood... these occur left and right and entirely without reason or purpose. It blatantly rips off the plot from Escape from New York (a character is even named Carpenter in apparent homage), the set-up will be compared to 28 Days Later (though any "massive viral outbreak in Britain" plot will get that now), steals a lot of design and atmosphere from Mad Max and still manages to throw in some medieval nonsense in there as well. Fight scenes were of the terrible, overly-fast, shaky-cam, quick-cut style making them a jumbled mess and none of the effects really felt that impressive. Almost none of the plot has any semblance of sense with almost every action occurring for little to no reason and characters being encountered so randomly that the writing doesn't feel quite good enough to even be considered lazy. In all I really enjoyed most of the films this is derived from. Heck, I even enjoyed Escape from LA to a moderate degree. This, however, was a waste of time and money even as a free screening.

Doomsday takes place in a future post apocalyptic England, where much has been wiped out due to a lethal virus. A woman named Eden Sinclair is nominated by a policeman friend to go and lead a team to the outskirts of the city to try and find a cure for the virus. Once on the edge of the city they encounter survivors of the virus who now obey a former scientist named Kane, who has become their ruler and lots of action, violence and thrills come with this as the crew trying to find the cure has to fight off Kane's many followers who are bloodthirsty killers and look reminiscent of those you would find in any post apocalyptic film, or even a low budget Troma film for that matter. Doomsday was not screened for most critics to review, so in most cases that should tell you right off that it is not a good film because otherwise critics would have had a chance to review it. I was still interested in this film however, so I decided to give it a chance. Basically the film is a big budgeted and campy B movie although it does have a lot of style and things that do make it more entertaining than ludicrous even though it is pretty silly. The film's plot is quite hard to follow and what there is of a plot seems to be pretty out there and isn't really anything new or original. The film visually is quite interesting to look at and I was overall impressed by the style and production values done by the director and crew. As for the rest of it, I did find myself getting into this nonsense and actually enjoying it because of the stylish direction and the non stop action and gratuitous violence. In other words if you are a fan of films that are loud, violent and have non stop action, then this would be the perfect film for you. It's not a film that will go down in history for breaking any new barriers and it is most likely to become a film that would be seen on cable television at midnight when all the offbeat enthusiasts would be watching, but because the film kept me entertained and never bored me and because I did appreciate the style of the film I 'am giving the film the rating I have chosen because of this. Please note that this is in no way a masterpiece and is simply a slice of entertainment with style and gore that entertained me and nothing more. So with that in mind if this sounds right up your alley then I recommend it, however if you want something with more style and substance then check out some of the Oscar nominated films from last year that are now hitting DVD.

I think that the movie starts out well. The narrative is fine and the atmosphere of impending doom gets through to the audience. At the very moment that we enter the virus-zone the movie falls apart. They are attacked fiercely by a large number of punks and since the team was so unprepared it made you wonder what information they had from the photographs taken from the satellite. They try to escape in their vehicles and somebody smashes the window with a rock or something!? How is this possible as we were told that their armored vehicles could withstand high caliber weapons...? Many obvious flaws in the movie combined with a world in the virus infected zone that is to unbelievable... I can't recommend this movie no matter what.... You will not be able to suspend your critical thoughts when watching this movie. Regards Simon PS. such a shame that Malcolm Mcdowell chooses to appear in this movie. Ps. When you read reviews that gives max score check to see if the user has made more than one review. If not consider the possibility of a lobbyist. If you agree consider putting this post scriptum at the bottom at your own reviews.

Neil Marshall, the multi-talented British director who previously made the gory but nevertheless tasteful "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent", surprises and primarily pleases his fan-base audiences with this mega-outrageous, campy and tasteless SciFi-horror-action hybrid that is simply destined to become a cult classic within the next couple of years already. I was lucky enough to see the film during a national film festival, where Neil Marshall was at guest himself to single-handedly present his film to anxious Belgian genre fans. Marshall described his own film in only a few words, but it was much better than any film-critic could ever do it in his place. He openly admitted that "Doomsday" is principally a direct love letter to all the movies he grew up with and that he deliberately stuffed the screenplay with numerous tributes and hidden references towards the paranoid and apocalyptic Sci-Fi (road-) movies of the early 80's. It only requires a glimpse at the screen and you immediately know Marshall is right. "Doomsday" catapults you straight back to the glorious days of cheesy exploitation where literally everything was possible and plot-logic and coherence weren't necessities. The two main inspirations for the film are obviously "Mad Max" and "Escape from N.Y.", but talking in terms of absurd plot twists, OTT set pieces and flamboyant costume designs, uncompromising gore, deliberately bad acting performances and insane character drawings, "Doomsday" is actually far more reminiscent to the (mainly Italian) rip-off industry of that time. Apart from the aforementioned and acclaimed landmarks, I also recognized bits and pieces – though I may be mistaken of course - of far more obscure titles like "The Atlantis Interceptors", "After the Fall of New York", "2033: The New Gladiators", "The Bronx Warriors", "Warriors of the Wasteland" and countless of others. In 2008, there's a sudden outbreak of the unstoppable and incurable "Reaper Virus in Glasgow. In order to prevent further spreading, the British government simply decides to build a wall all around Scotland and leave everyone within the borders to die a slow and painful death. Almost twenty years later, in 2035, the feared Virus returns and threatens to rapidly extinct the entire population of London. The Prime Minister and his corrupt as hell right hand Canaris send the fearless Special Agent Eden Sinclair to Scotland to search for a remedy. Because there definitely are survivors in Scotland; the government just decided to keep it secret. When entering the area with her troops, Eden almost immediately runs into large clusters of survivors that reverted to primitive and barbaric life-styles. Their search for the virus' cure quickly turns into a vile battle to stay alive. "Doomsday" is simply Fan-Tas-Tic entertainment and it's undoubtedly the greatest trash-film of the past two decades. The plot stops to make sense quite early in the film and has more holes than the average fishing net. The narrative is also wildly incoherent and even the tiniest plot twist and line of dialog is stolen from another film. But, seriously, who cares about all that when a movie is this much fun! "Doomsday" is extremely violent, with unhinged footage of anarchy and even a throwback to the Roman times in the arena, but simultaneously hilarious, with the craziest characters imaginable and even a soundtrack featuring golden eighties bands like The Fine Young Cannibals and Franky Goes to Hollywood. The campy highlights in "Doomsday" are literally too numerous to list, but I assure it has everything any fan of B-movies could ever dream of. I hate to sound obnoxious and/or pretend all knowing, but all those people claiming "Doomsday" is a pointlessly stupid film either missed the whole point or simply don't fit within Neil Marshall's target group and thus shouldn't criticize.